Norfolk Gazette And Publick Ledger

Extract of a letter from Bourdeaux, to a respectable mercantile house in Boston, dated April 4, 1805.

"A new law has appeared under the date of the 30th Ventose (21st March) authorizing the seizure and confiscation of all colonial produce imported in foreign ships, which shall not be accompanied with certificates of the French Commercial Agent, certifying that it is not the production of any colony or country under the dominion of Great Britain. It will be rigorously enforced, even against vessels coming from ports where no such agent resides.—
This law is supplementary to one of the same nature, of the 1st Messidor, 11th year, (20th June,) but more severe in its dispositions, as there was a modification in the latter, by which an exportation of an equal value in French manufactured goods, within the three months following the importation was to be considered as an exemption from all penalties, seizures, or confiscations; but this privilege is no longer allowed. Although this regulation is of little consequence to your port, where you are in habits of accompanying every shipment with the document here exacted, yet a knowledge of its existence may be necessary to the neighbouring ports, where no Commercial Agent resides."